Professional Learning Communities at Work,

Professional Learning Communities at Work, Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement

The book Professional Learning Communities at Work, Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement attempts to provide an answer to the often vexing questions that plague persons in the educational profession as to what policies are best to implement to enhance collective student achievement on a school-wide level, as opposed to what policies merely improve individual student performance within the classroom. The book advocates a 'best practices' approach, namely it suggests educators identify what practices work and which do not, in the form of instituting school learning communities that are built around the specific needs of a community of students in dialogue with the concerns and ideas of school teachers, administrators and parents. The book suggests that such a united approach is essential to making concrete strives to revivify the so-called "excellence movement" to improve public education for every student. (Dufor, Eaker & Baker, 1998, p.6)

Despite the national context into which their research is located, authors Dufor and Eaker stress the need for locally generated, small learning communities rather than provide specific curriculum prescriptions. They suggest new modes of staff organization, rather than a holistic, new approach to specific subject matter. At the core of the book is the ideal that Small Learning of Communities (SLC) of individuals within the school, united by Professional Learning Communities (PLC) of educators and administrators can bring about change. Principals, as delineated in Chapter 9 of the text, are especially important in creating cultural changes and facilitating dialogue between teachers and parents at a school. Principals are a kind of bridge figure between the occasionally competing needs and desires of the different actors within individual classrooms. Principals are often the school's primary mouthpieces to the larger community of parents.

Dufor, Eaker and Baker state that principals also have a critical internal role in fostering staff development so that teachers and administrators can communicate amongst themselves and create a common culture of learning and professional development within the school. It is necessary that principals provide an objective eye during disputes when reviewing the available data used to gauge student performance when embarking upon new, school-driven initiatives. Principals are instrumental in sparking professional dialogue amongst teachers and encouraging critical self-reflection within the minds of individual teachers. All of these elements of reflection and reflexiveness are essential during staff meetings, for a true Professional Learning Community to function as it should.

A good principal is willing to provide an honest evaluation as to how the school is progressing in its mission and not allow the school's reputation to rest upon its past laurels. A principal functions as the strategic planner who determines the long-term goals of the school, and the short-term goals or benchmarks the school must reach to achieve those goals. By setting goals and helping generate a collective sense of mission for all persons at the school, principals create the necessary atmosphere at the school for more effective practices.

Principals also play an important role in facilitating professional development, as the ideal of teachers continuing to learn while they teach is a critical part of creating a Professional Learning Community. Principals can help foster such a community by encouraging new teachers to learn from mentor teachers, and by allowing older teachers to sharpen their skills by trying new things, and even to learn from equally experienced (or even less experienced) colleagues.